My Skyminer
and the Beginning of the New Internet
I first heard about a Skyminer during the era of all the ICO scams and I couldn’t believe that some crypto project is actually doing something real. I wasn’t sure whether the idea of decentralized internet and cutting of the traditional ISPs as we know them was brilliant or crazy but I liked it. I spent a few months reading through all the information and I was hooked.
Skywire and problems it aims to solve
Internet has been around for a couple of decades now and we have not seen any major developments or changes to its fundamentals since its inception. On the other hand, the way we use internet has changed dramatically and it is clear that internet does not meet the needs of its users anymore and there is a huge demand for network that would be private, fast and reliable. I live in London, which you would think is a rather developed city with access to all the mod cons but the truth is that the state of internet here is shocking. Even though our household pays a ludicrous amount of money each month for one of the best packages available, simple things like e.g. playing cards online or calling people through messaging apps is a nightmare.
Skycoin project embarked on a mission to improve the way we communicate and share data on the internet and developed Skywire. One of the problems with the traditional internet is that even if you’re sending something to your neighbour, the data packets will hop all around the world before they reach the desired destination, which is very inefficient. Skywire’s protocol enables to find the closest node around at every stage of the route, hence will provide a much greater speed. Skywire also ensures that all data is private and cannot be tracked or stolen. No-one will be able to read the contents of the individual data packets and the traffic will not be associated with a user or a particular IP address as the nodes through which the traffic is passing will only have information about one prior and one subsequent node.
As with any decentralized application, Skywire is run by the community. Anyone can join and provide more nodes to the network, which will help to make it more reliable and robust. You may think it is dangerous to have anyone be part of the network but Skywire operates in the form of a web-of-trust. The consensus mechanism, Obelisk, is quite complex (you can read a bit more on it here) and will ensure that malicious nodes are cut off and cannot harm the network.
Get rewarded for helping Skycoin make internet better
People who run Skywire nodes currently receive rewards on a monthly basis. The first and second release of official miners are being rewarded in the same way — there is a pool of Skycoin that is equally distributed to all nodes that have been online for at least 75% of the time in the month.
The third and current release of official miners are rewarded slightly differently. They cost $1,999 (can be purchased in the Skycoin hardware store) and Skycoin rewards are adjusted every month to equal 1/24 of the miner price (i.e. $83.30 USD). Each miner will receive up to 24 reward payouts if up-time requirements are met and the rewards can be claimed within three years. Eventually, nodes operating on the Skywire network will be receiving traffic forwarding payments as well.
The traffic forwarding payments are expected to be in Coinhours, which is a parallel currency. Currently they are not being traded on exchanges and so we can only speculate about their value at the moment, but they are expected to be listed soon. As Coinhours are generated for simply holding Skycoin in a wallet (you get 1 Coinhour for holding 1 Skycoin for 1 hour), Skywire services will fundamentally be free to users and therefore the demand should grow rapidly.
The current model of rewards guarantees everyone will receive their initial investment back, plus they will make extra revenue based on how much traffic they forwarded. I assume the guarantee of purchase price refund in USD (actually received in Skycoin) has been introduced as a response to people complaining about the rebate for second batch miners. What happened was that the second release of official Skyminers cost 1 BTC and people were promised a rebate of 0.9 BTC in Skycoin — at the time of the second batch release it was 750 Skycoin. Unfortunately, in June the price of Skycoin and most other alt coins plummeted, and so by the time the rebates were processed, the value was less than 0.9 BTC, which made people complain. In my honest opinion, this is a risk that people have to account for when making transactions in volatile markets. Not that I wasn’t disappointed but at that time the whole crypto world took a hit and so was best to forget about money and concentrate on the fundamentals and progress. We’re all in it for the long term, right?
For people who find $1,999 a bit too steep and are a bit more technically skilled, there is also the option to build their own miners. They need to meet certain specifications, be whitelisted, i.e. approved by the Skycoin team but currently there is no wait list and a variety of hardware is being accepted. As official miners, DIY miners also receive rewards from the pool of Skycoin for up to 8 nodes if the up-time requirement is met but the amount per node is lower. Simple, one node miner can be built for just about $40, so it’s definitely worth a try and you can always add more nodes later. Currently, there is over 9,000 nodes already and you can check out the count and locations of Skywire nodes here.
My Skyminer Story
It was May 2018 and I’ve learned all of the above. I’ve seen pictures of the Skyminer and I wanted one but at that time the first release of Skyminers was long finished. I was sad — the face of a kid when you tell them the toy they want is sold out sad! I wasn’t confident enough to build my own but there was a promise of the next batch being released soon. I signed up online to express my interest and then nervously waited for an email saying that more are in stock and I can purchase one. On 6 July, two days before my birthday, the good news arrived!
I expected it would take a few weeks for the miner to arrive given it was being sent from China, but to my surprise, it only took a few days. There was no issue with the customs, I didn’t even need to pay any fees and by 16 July, my Skyminer was home.
I was all ready for this. I had the manual downloaded, Youtube video with instructions loaded up, I bought an USB to Ethernet Adapter, US to UK plug adapter and extra cables. I unpacked all the components and started building.
The manual was easy to follow and anyone who is able to put together some Swedish furniture will be able to build a Skyminer. There is a few fiddly bits but with a bit of patience, my Skyminer was built in a few hours. I plugged it in and — nothing! Right, what have I done!?
Panicking, I was plugging and unplugging, wiggling all the wires and all of a sudden I have an almost out of body experience where I see myself scream, there’s pain running through my body and my brain doesn’t comprehend what’s going on. Word of advice, kids, do not play with electrical wires when the device is plugged in an electrical socket!
Next day I approached the issue with a bit more thought and reason. I checked the wiring looked exactly as it was in the pictures. I had the Skycoin support team on Telegram look at the wiring too and they confirmed it was fine. I’ve tried turning all the Pi’s on and they all lit up, so that confirmed the power supply was working fine. I plugged in the router using the standard adapter (which was included in the package but normally you don’t need it as the router is powered through the miner’s power supply) and nothing happened. The router was dead. I jumped on the internet and ordered the cheapest router and 16-port switch I could find, hoping I can still get the miner up and running by the end of July so that I made sure I had the required up-time in August.
Around 25th July, the hardware was finally all working and I could move onto installing the software. I did have a few issues mostly due to lack of my knowledge about IP addresses etc. but the Skycoin support team on Telegram was amazing help. A special shout out to Asxtree who never lost patience no matter how basic my question was.
Building a Skyminer wasn’t a simple task for me, but I have learnt a lot and it most definitely was fun. It has now been running for over 10 months and I didn’t have to touch it since the initial installation. Well, except for once, when I was moving houses and it was impossible to change the IP address of the new home router, but that is a different story!
Skycoin is a very ambitious project and Skywire is only one part of it. The development and progress I witnessed over the last year and a half has been very impressive and I can’t wait to see what else is in store for us. Join Skyfleet, become your own ISP and learn more about Skycoin:
Telegram: https://t.me/Skycoin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Skycoinproject
Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/Skycoin
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/skycoin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/skycoinofficial
